promise, and give him every opportunity of executing it, both during your life and after your death. "My requests, I think, are now all made, except that you would bestow upon my servants the sums which I have written down upon the paper attached to this letter, and that you would assign to the convent of Ursulines at Juvigny the thousand crowns of revenue which, with your consent, I promised them on the birth of our daughter, and which has never been formally made over to them. Besides this, I trust that you will give a thousand livres to the church of St. Peter at Rennes, to be expended in masses for my soul; and as my last request, I beseech you to think of me kindly, and when I am dead, to do that justice to my memory which you have not done to my faith and honour while living." I could well conceive, as I read these words, how poignantly they must have gone home to the heart of Monsieur de Villardin; and even as I read them in silence before him, I could see from his eye,--which was fixed upon my face, scanning its expression from line to line,--that he again mentally ran over all which that paper contained, and inflicted on his own heart every gentle word as the most severe of punishments. "Do you undertake the task?" he demanded, when I had done. "I have already done so, my lord," I replied; "and I never forget my word." "Your task may become a strange and a difficult one," he said, musing; "but never mind," he added, abruptly, and at the same time rising, "whatever comes of it, so it shall be. I on my part promise, before Heaven and before you, on my hope of pardon, and on my honour as a man, to give you every means of executing what you have undertaken, and to take such measures as will secure you the same opportunity should I die. She said right," he continued, holding out his hand to me; "she said right, poor girl; you do possess my confidence most fully; none ever possessed it so much; and would to God, would to God, that you had possessed it more! Oh, had I but trusted your words! oh God! oh God! that it should now be all beyond recall!" and he groaned bitterly under the torture of remorse. "Tell me," he cried, after a long pause, "tell me! do you know of any cause which that woman--that Suzette had to hate her mistress?" "Personally I know of none," I answered; "but, if I mistake not, good old Jerome Laborde could assign sufficient reasons for all her malice." "I will inquire!" he rejoined, "I will inquire!" and carefully locking the doors, he turned away from the apartments of his dead wife.